My 13 year old daughter is spending two weeks at a program for gifted students up at Western Kentucky University (two hours EAST of us). She wanted to take her guitar along and I told her that when I was a student there, many years ago, guitar players would go into the stairwell of the classroom building next door to the dorm she is staying in. The acoustics were tremendous in that stairwell, but you could also hear it throughout the building, so they would get run off fairly quickly.

I went up to visit this past weekend and she told me she found the stair well and played her guitar in it. They came and ran her off pretty quickly, but not before she made four dollars from college students and faculty passing by!!

So, she made money playing guitar and got run off by the authorities. I figure she has now had the full busking experience and she's hooked.

She has surprised me by entering her self in several talent shows of late. One was at the Heartwood gathering in West Virginia with a couple hundred people in a big circus tent with a stage, sound equipment and the whole works. There were some REALLY talented folks playing that night.

She put her name in the hat and ended up going on stage as the first act. She came off so well that she was asked to play an extra song.

She came off the stage shaking but it did her good.

She keeps getting onto me because I've never played in front of anybody but my kids. Maybe someday we'll work up something together.

I made the mistake of telling her I'd buy her any instrument she would commit to taking lessons on. She starts fiddle lessons next week.

Fortunately, her sister has been content with saxaphone and piano; so far.

And Dan, if I make it back out to San Francisco, I'll bring her with me. What corner is it you play on? I need to teach her to cut heads from across the street...

Singapore is a little tropical island on the equator located in South-East Asia at the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. It was a British colony up till 1965, during which many immigrants from Asia came in search of work and fortune, thus creating an immigrant society with a mix of ethnicities.

Immigrants from China made up a large percentage, and as a result the largest ethnic group in Singapores' population is Chinese, followed by Malays, Indians and Eurasians. After gaining independence, Singapore society was based on the principles of meritocracy and racial harmony rather than favouring one ethnic group over another.

*phew* in short, Singapore is not part of China, even though a sizeable part of the population is of Chinese descent. And I don't think any of us would really want to go all the way to US to muscle out a busking spot when we've got a couple of our own here!

Nice writing, and a nice take on the Busking experience - at a different angle than my own. Mind if I put a link to that on "Busker's Blues"?

(I haven't been "moved along" by the police since I was 19 - I learned long ago how not to look like a vagrant, or like I'm commiting mopery. in spite of the fact that I spend a shocking amount of time hanging on street corners waiting to see what happens, in a high profile manner.)

The whole key to succesful busking is understanding that it isn't a form of mopery - and communicating this to passersby.